Doubts cast on youth mental health program

FORMER Australian of the Year Patrick McGorry's $222 million youth mental health program funded by taxpayers is under challenge.

Sue Dunlevy

News Corp Australia NetworkOctober 6, 20129:48pm

Australian of the Year and mental health expert Professor Patrick McGorry at Monash University in Melbourne, Victoria. Picture: David GeraghtySource:News Limited

FORMER Australian of the Year Patrick McGorry's $222 million youth mental health program funded by taxpayers is under challenge from international psychiatrists.

Also being challenged is its claim psychosis can be detected early and prevented has been dropped from psychiatry's diagnostic bible.

West Australian Labor MP Martin Whitely has taken aim at the program and attacked his own colleague Mental Health Minister Mark Butler for funding the program in a speech to the state parliament.

McGorry's Early Psychosis Prevention and Intervention Centres got the largest slice of funding under in Labor's 2010 $2.2 billion mental health plan.

However, Whitely says research shows the pre-psychotic state McGorry wants to diagnose has a false positive rate of between 64 and 92 per cent and he fears thousands of young teens could be put on anti-psychotic drugs for no reason.

These drugs have serious side effects such as massive weight gain, heart problems and metabolic disorder.

"The problem is that the politicians have let a handful of gurus relying on rhetoric, charisma and hype drive the direction of the mental health policy in Australia," he told the parliament.

"They have accepted their overblown claims without scrutiny," he said.

A recently published audit of McGorry's Orygen Youth Health medical records found 75 per cent of those diagnosed with depression in 2007 were given the drugs too early.

And leading children's psychiatrist Professor Jon Jeureidini has criticsed a training video that demonstrates how to diagnose McGorry's ultra-high risk psychosis as a demonstration of "how not to carry out a psychiatric interview".

Professor Partick McGorry - who was named Australian of the Year in January 2010 for his services to youth mental health - denies his centres are using anti-psychotic drugs to treat young people in a prepsychotic state.

"We actually take 27 per cent of patients off anti-psychotics," he says.

Many young people aged 15-24 who come to his centres seeking help have not had a psychotic episode but they do have mental health issues that need "care and support", he says.

And he says while psychiatry's diagnostic bible the DSM5 has dropped the inclusion of psychosis risk syndrome from its upcoming new edition he hopes it will be included as a research area in the guide.

Eighteen months after they were promised none of the 16 new EPPIC centres have been rolled stymied by states who have failed to come up with their share of the funding.

A spokesman for Mental Health Minister Mark Butler said the onset of a first episode of psychosis, if left untreated, "can seriously derail a person's life so it's important we get the right support to people as early as possible".

"Mr Whitely is entitled to his opinion, but the EPPIC model is commonly recognised as best practice and has become the template for the development of specialist early intervention psychosis services throughout the world.," the spokesman said.